How to format your references using the Vision Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Vision Research. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Stickgold, R. (2005). Sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Nature, 437(7063), 1272–1278.

A journal article with 2 authors

Paukner, C., & Koziol, K. K. K. (2014). Ultra-pure single wall carbon nanotube fibres continuously spun without promoter. Scientific Reports, 4, 3903.

A journal article with 3 authors

Goldman, S. R., Ebright, R. H., & Nickels, B. E. (2009). Direct detection of abortive RNA transcripts in vivo. Science (New York, N.Y.), 324(5929), 927–928.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Sigal, A., Milo, R., Cohen, A., Geva-Zatorsky, N., Klein, Y., Liron, Y., Rosenfeld, N., Danon, T., Perzov, N., & Alon, U. (2006). Variability and memory of protein levels in human cells. Nature, 444(7119), 643–646.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Ursone, P. (2015). How to Calculate Options Prices and Their Greeks. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Zarate, C. A., Jr., & Manji, H. K. (Eds.). (2016). Bipolar Depression: Molecular Neurobiology, Clinical Diagnosis, and Pharmacotherapy (2nd ed. 2016). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Holmstrup, P., & Nielsen, C. H. (2016). Linkage Between Periodontal Disease and Rheumatoid Arthritis. In A. M. Lynge Pedersen (Ed.), Oral Infections and General Health: From Molecule to Chairside (pp. 45–51). Springer International Publishing.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Vision Research.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. (2017, January 18). Brand New Observations Of The Sun Show A Turtle-Shaped Spot. IFLScience; IFLScience.

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. (2008). Comments on the Office of Personnel Management’s February 20, 2008 Report to Congress Regarding the Retirement Systems Modernization (GAO-08-576R). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Gunderson, C. A. (2017). The Moderating Effect of Type of Target on the Relationship between Collective Rumination and Displaced Aggression [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Hollander, S. (2000, August 25). Missed Opportunities Are the Liberty’s Downfall. New York Times, D5.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Stickgold, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Paukner & Koziol, 2014; Stickgold, 2005).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Paukner & Koziol, 2014)
Three authors: (Goldman et al., 2009)
6 or more authors: (Sigal et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Vision Research
Abbreviation	Vision Res.
ISSN (print)	0042-6989
Scope	Ophthalmology Sensory Systems

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